I’ve been reading Haruki Murakami’s What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. It’s a gem of a book –
a memoir about the running life from one of the world’s great novelists. I’ve
been devouring it with intense interest.
In the Preface, Murakami (who has been running for almost
three decades and has completed over 20 marathons) tells the story of hanging
out in a hotel room in Paris (he doesn’t say why) and happening upon a
newspaper article about marathoning. A reporter had interviewed a number of
famous marathoners (Murakami doesn’t say which ones) and asked them what went
through their heads as they ran – what kind of mantra did they repeat to
themselves to keep going. Murakami talks about one runner who talked about a
mantra he’d received from his older brother, one he’d pondered ever since: Pain
is inevitable. Suffering is optional.
Murakami (sort of) elaborates:
Say you’re running and you start
to think, Man this hurts, I can’t take it
anymore. The hurt part is an
unavoidable reality, but whether or not you can stand any more is up to the
runner himself. This pretty much sums up the most important aspect of marathon
running.
To me, it’s a staggering insight – it’s the heart of Buddhism
rolled up tight as a fortune cookie – wisdom short enough to send in a single
text message. The hard work is figuring out what it really means in an
experiential way. Running is one way of working on it – what is unavoidably
real; how do I live with it?
Runners who strive to do their best get first-hand practice
with learning to distinguish between pain/discomfort and the mind’s reaction to
it. I feel like I can sort of taste the difference, can taste the mix of
flavours that come with running pain – whether it’s the sharp gut pain of a
fast 400 interval or the grinding heavy fatigue beyond 32k, there is the pain
and there is the reaction to it. Sometimes there’s real injury – but that’s not
what we’re talking about here. It’s not usually the hurt that makes me slow or
stop – it’s the suffering I heap on top of it. The trick is to learn to
recognize the mental mechanism that adds suffering, learn how to shut it off.
That takes practice – runners can practice it with every hard effort.
Slogans don’t always work well in communicating wisdom – the
oversimplification is dangerous. But this line – Pain is inevitable. Suffering
is optional – is meant as a mantra (well, it’s more of a contemplation, but let’s
not worry about the difference) to be turned over with each stride, tested and prodded
with intelligent as well as physical reflection. It would be easy to get bogged
down in questions of language and definition, but the point here (maybe) is
more to understand and accept what is inevitable (the real conditions) and to
work with what is not – and it is surprising what is not.
One of the amazing things about Murakami’s writing in this
memoir is his restraint. He crystallizes a little gem of insight, wraps it in
conversational language, and then just leaves it there in a short paragraph for
the reader to pick up (or miss) and turn this way and that in the light. It
would be so tempting to elaborate, to take his insights about running and
elaborate them as life lessons. But he doesn’t do it. He just leaves the idea
there, an idea about running, and walks away – it’s not his fault is we bloat it with extra meaning.
I’m not even halfway through the book, but already I’d
recommend it to any runner. Even if contemplating ideas and such is not your
bag, the personal stories are engaging and the writing is damn funny at times.
I’ll leave you with a line that made me laugh out loud (which I almost never do
when reading): “The most important thing we ever learn at school is the fact
that the most important things can’t be learned at school.”
